(December 14, 2016 at 5:23 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(December 14, 2016 at 3:15 pm)wallym Wrote: I'm saying the concept of hypotenuse, sums, squares, sides, etc... would no longer exist.
Well, neither would the concept of inches as a unit of measure but things still have extension in space, do they not? Are you suggesting that spacial relationships do not exist apart from people knowing about them? Are gravity and mass just concept too? Matter? I guess what I am asking is what kinds of things do you consider part of objective reality that can exist without someone forming a concept of it. Were sharks still sharks before humans evolved to find (and perhaps be eaten by) them?
It's complicated, because I can't describe something without including my perception of it. What is gravity from the point of view of a rock. A rock doesn't have a point of view, of course. Without something to perceive these things, concepts can't exist. It's just what is, which I think falls under the category of matter. Just as I think concepts also fall under the category of matter. As you could, likely, literally cut out a concept from someone's brain.
What is a shark without perception? Just a subset of matter in a big pile of matter. Of course any subsets of the matter we create are again concepts. We think of these things as seperate, but it's all one thing. It's just existence. Again, tough to imagine, because of our inability to imagine how it would be, I think.
